Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Diego Forlan has spoken to the official website about his time at Manchester United. After Dimitar Berbatov scored a hattrick against Liverpool yesterday, Forlan was asked how well he remembered the two goals he scored at Anfield in 2002.

“Very clearly,” Forlan responded. “They came at a difficult time for me. I was not playing so much and hardly playing in the big games. I didn’t feel like a footballer. I was training, but not playing. At the start of my time at United I was OK about sitting on the bench or even in the stands, but then I wanted to be playing 90 minutes. That game against Liverpool was one time I played a full game. It was not an easy game to start in and the first half was difficult, I didn’t see much of the ball. Part of me was thinking that I was going to be substituted, but it all changed in the second half. Gary Neville was the first to come up to me after the game as we celebrated. He looked me in the eyes and said, “They’ll never forget you here after that.”

Imam Khomeini also answered a question about the use of musical instruments by saying that it depends on how they are used and by whom: this view echoes Imam Ghazali, who made distinctions about music according to three criteria: the place of listening, the time of listening, and the companions of listening. This is not to say only that music is a free-for-all, that each person makes individual rules. Rather it is recognition that people are at different stages, and that some people are more aware and others more distracted.

by Yusuf al-Khabbaz/HARAKAH DAILY

Muslims will often begin inquiries into the art of sound in the world of Islam by asking whether listening to music is haram.

The term haram has a legal sense and a cultural sense. The cultural sense of the word, the way it is used casually, is closer to the meaning of "shameful". In the legal sense, to be haram requires that something is explicitly forbidden in Qur’an and Hadith, with punishments laid down in the shari’ah for infraction. This does not apply to music.

Nor is there any consensus among Muslim scholars. The Qur’an says nothing directly about music, and scholars usually use qiyas (analogy) to extrapolate from other areas.

Francis Jeffers – £8m was paid for the so-called ‘fox in the box’. Four goals in 22 matches for the Gunners showed that he was probably playing football like a fox would. It’s no surprise that his career didn’t really kick off prior to or after his Arsenal spell.

Igors Stepanovs – the defender is a much-travelled one. This gives some indication as to what other managers think of him I suppose. He may be 6ft 4in but that don’t mean a thing when you look at his time in north London where he never fulfilled any supposed potential. His worst moment must surely be his role in Arsenal’s 6-1 defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford, in 2001.

People will always remember Valderrama for his massive bright blonde perm. What a lot of people don’t know is that he is Colombia’s most capped player ever. Between 1985 and 1998 he represented his country one hundred and eleven times, scoring eleven goals. Now forty nine years old, Valderrama has mellowed with age and gone with a more sensible haircut. It’s a slightly smaller version of the massive blonde perm, but he has grown his moustache a lot thicker.